God I love Houston. An urban trail riding club, Nonstop Riders, has just rolled up to the downtown protest. Here’s Marcus Johnson of Houston’s Fifth award, fist raised in the air. “We’re here representing for all our black brothers and sisters.”
Here is one of the Texas moms who traveled to Austin yesterday for a state legislative hearing focused on parents’ rights in education.
She’s angry because her son learned about Banksy in a high school art class.
“What do you want me to say?” the teacher told me after I knocked on her door. “That I can’t eat? That all I hear are their voices screaming? And I can’t help them?”
This interview was one of the hardest I've ever done.
I hope you'll give it a read.
Last night, after we’d lost power & my pipes burst, my toddler choked on a peanut in our dark house. We rushed him across town on icy roads for emergency surgery at a hospital that does not have enough water pressure to flush toilets.
Texas is a disaster.
The Gaineses donated to the “anti-CRT” school board campaign of Chip’s sister, and once elected, she voted to adopt a sweeping policy that bans discussions of LGBTQ identities, limits lessons about racism and permits teachers to deadname trans children against parents’ wishes.
This group is walking around the NRA convention with a child-sized casket and holding up photos of kids killed in Uvalde.
“Protect our kids, not guns!”
"Rather than attacking the media, y'all should attack those cops."
Uvalde residents react after the mayor and a city council member called journalists "chickenshit" for releasing security camera footage from Robb Elementary. (h/t
@ahylton26
)
From the police interview of Daniel Perry, the man convicted of murder whom Gov. Greg Abbott now wants to pardon.
"I didn't want to give him a chance to aim at me, ya know?"
In an increasingly armed society, when do you get to shoot gun-carrying people and call it self-defense?
This group is walking around the NRA convention with a child-sized casket and holding up photos of kids killed in Uvalde.
“Protect our kids, not guns!”
The librarians are fighting back.
A middle school librarian in Louisiana filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday arguing that two men falsely labeled her a pedophile who wants to teach 11-year-olds about anal sex.
From
@tylerkingkade
:
Recent library book challenge from a mom in North Texas. “I read every page expecting to be offended.” But after finding “Ash” by Malinda Lo to be filled with “kindness and caring,” parent Mary Smith wanted it banned anyway because it “normalizes lesbian love.”
A new mural going up right now in Houston’s 3rd Ward, across the street from one of George Floyd’s childhood homes. A crowd has gathered, a long procession of cars snaking by. A woman is crying as she describes the scene to a friend on speaker phone. “It’s him. It’s our George.”
A new mural going up right now in Houston’s 3rd Ward, across the street from one of George Floyd’s childhood homes. A crowd has gathered, a long procession of cars snaking by. A woman is crying as she describes the scene to a friend on speaker phone. “It’s him. It’s our George.”
I also want to be a good dad so I just refilled our toilet flushing bucket from the tap outside and filled another pot of water to boil so we can wash the kids for the first time in five days.
DeSantis’ new 25-year-old speechwriter praised Nick Fuentes and agreed with the white nationalist when he said women “should have no authority over men” and that they “just really have no business in politics.”
It’s disappointing that neither the
@nytimes
or
@washingtonpost
noted in their stories that this bombshell report on sex abuse in the Southern Baptist church was triggered by an investigation by local journalists in Texas. Why leave that part out?
The mayor of Uvalde says he can't comment on whether the police acted properly because "I haven't seen the video yet" and then proceeds to praise the courage of one of the officers based on ... what he saw in the video 🤔
Tweeted from a hospital bed after getting an emergency medical treatment that costs minimum of $2,100 per infusion (big pharma 💰), while his wife, who’d gotten the $25 jab, rested at home.
One clarification: The hospital does not have *any* water. They’re trucking it in. Nurses and staff are exhausted — many of them away from families stuck in frozen houses — but doing a great job caring for my little guy.
Emotions are supercharged in Houston.
Protestor shouting “Murder” in Spanish nonstop through a bullhorn as NRA members filter in. Across the street, convention goers can't figure out what it means.
“It's Spanish. Maybe it has something to do with Beto?”
“That fucking idiot?”
The Uvalde school police chief told the
@TexasTribune
that he was ready to die for those kids, he just needed a key. Now the
@ExpressNews
is reporting that he never even tried to open the doors and that they may have been unlocked the whole time.
A Franklin, Tennessee, council member just held up a photo of what she described as a drag queen biting into “a live, beating heart” in explaining why she’s going the vote against granting a permit for a LGBTQ pride festival.
“This could have happened here.”
A white woman confronted my kids and their friends at the park today because they were building a fort with dead sticks in the woods.
An officer showed up. An armed agent of the government.
Because my kids were playing.
I am so angry.
This professor criticized Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in class.
A politically connected student told her mom.
Within two hours, Texas A&M’s chancellor was texting Dan Patrick directly to let him know the professor had been suspended pending an investigation.
Here's a newly elected anti-CRT school board member at CyFair ISD, the third largest school district in Texas, suggesting at a meeting on Monday that Houston ISD has worse student outcomes because the district has more Black teachers.
This woman swapped out her sign after several NRA attendees joked about wanting to take her up on the offer, including an older man who walked up to her and said, “Let’s do it. I’m horny. You look good.”
This is gonna be a long day.
“They won’t let you take your guns in there! Read between the lines!”
I left the site of the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history to be in Houston, where I found this 33-year-old woman shouting “Shame on you!” as NRA members filtered into their annual convention.
Two GOP bills to chip away at the separation of church & state and promote Christianity in public schools are getting a hearing in the Texas Senate this week.
One, SB 1515, would require schools to display the Ten Commandments (King James version) in EVERY classroom. 1/
It was only a matter of time.
Parents in Granbury, Texas, filed a police reporter accusing school librarians of making “PORN” available to students. Now the constable is conducting an “active and pending criminal investigation.” 1/
NEW:
@HoodCountyTX
Constable Chad Jordan says his office is conducting an "active and pending criminal investigation" following complaints from members of a school book review committee aggrieved that books were not removed from a high school library.
When I was a new reporter, I helped break news of 10+ missing Black women & the possibility they’d been targeted by a serial killer in rural NC. For a hot second, CNN & Fox News were interested. Both canceled my appearance last minute after one white woman went missing in Georgia
A Uvalde police officer threatened to put me in handcuffs last week because I stepped off a sidewalk at the civic center to ask a pastor for his phone number.
Things Houston people have told me since moving here last year:
"It never snows."
"Our sports teams don't win anything."
"The creek doesn't come in this neighborhood."
You people can't be trusted.
A day after Tucker Carlson suggested that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott should pardon a man just convicted of murdering a BLM protestor, the governor says he’s on it.
Update from Southlake. Last night the school board voted 3-2 to reprimand a 4th grade teacher for having a copy of "This Book Is Anti-Racist" by Tiffany Jewell in her class. After a student brought it home, her parents complained that it violated their "morals and faith."
Video:
Authorities in Wisconsin did not want you to read this story. First a prosecutor sought a gag order after I reached out seeking comment. Then a state agency sent me a cease and desist order warning of potential criminal charges.
Proud of
@NBCNews
for publishing it anyway.
A theme I’ve noticed: Anti-CRT folks often compare their suburban school districts to big city systems that primarily serve lower-income communities, and suggest that policy choices — and not demographics and resources — is the main reason for the disparity in student outcomes.
More context: This mother is part of a PAC in Prosper, Texas, that has sought to have dozens of library books banned and has been a leader in a California-based group that opposes comprehensive sex ed in schools.
🧵Last August, I was listening to a feed of a heated North Texas school board meeting while juggling my nightly dad duties.
Which is why I was getting my 3-year-old to bed when I heard a mom make a shocking statement that
@ahylton26
and I have now spent a year investigating. 1/
Travis Cains was four years older than George and grew up with him in Third Ward. “I helped raise him,” he says. He asked a local artist to paint the mural to honor his old friend, who’s now become a national symbol.
Galaxy brain stuff here, pretending like Middle Earth is a real life historical place.
It’s a fantasy adventure series, bro. Pretty sure there also weren’t any dwarves or elves or wizards in any of the *great European kingdoms of old.*
Houston Chronicle scoop: Houston hospital executives’ sudden reversal on ICU capacity followed talks with Gov. Abbott in which “the governor expressed displeasure with negative headlines about ICU capacity.”
Hats off,
@zachdespart
@mmorris011
Emotions are supercharged in Houston.
Protestor shouting “Murder” in Spanish nonstop through a bullhorn as NRA members filter in. Across the street, convention goers can't figure out what it means.
“It's Spanish. Maybe it has something to do with Beto?”
“That fucking idiot?”
Tonight, officials in Franklin, Tenn, will decide whether LGBTQ people should be allowed to have a festival in public.
The city is being pressured to deny the pride permit by conservative Christians who packed city hall wearing “Choose Decency” stickers.
A thread about how a Texas school district with 90,000 students halted new book purchases following a trustee’s complaint about a picture book about a cat pretending to be a unicorn. (She was upset because the book includes the word “they,” but it wasn’t in reference to gender)
Meet the book that triggered the
@katyisd
board of trustees to withhold thousands of taxpayer funded library books from 94,000 students, weeks before the start of school. 😱
This Scholastic statement is a striking illustration of how public education is being reshaped in America via pressure campaigns and legislation.
Take this mindset of fear, and imagine the potential impacts on curriculum, textbook development and daily classroom instruction.
This is a must-read by
@RobertDownen_
about a GOP powerbroker who led anti-LGBTQ campaigns — warning of grooming of children by gay men — while defending a powerful Christian ally who’d long been accused of molesting boys and young men. via
@TexasTribune
Wow.
Here’s how Rep. Dan Crenshaw justified signing a brief in support of a lawsuit to overturn Biden’s election victory even though he said he did not believe that should happen.
From this
@HoustonChron
editorial:
After a year of "review" Leander ISD in Texas has now banned 11 books from its optional book club reading lists -- and will be proceeding to ensure no student has access to them in classroom libraries. A profound shame.
#FReadom
“When NBC News called Wendy Fine seeking comment, she said she was dialing in her husband, who could then be heard telling her, ‘Just hang up.’”
@mattlavietes
@NBCNews
FWIW, my kids and I are loving the new series so far. My 11-year-old is a huge Tolkien fan and loves where they’re going with the story. I guess that makes him a cultural Marxist or whatever.
RIGHT NOW: David & Tim Barton, who've said the purpose of public schools "is to teach students to love and serve God," make the case for forcing public schools to display the 10 Commandments in every classroom.
One suggests the measure could have stopped the Nashville shooting.
A school board candidate in Iowa is promising to get the names of every student who checked out certain LGBTQ books from the school library and to notify their parents. Also threatening to punish the school staff member who ordered the books.
"Richman and his wife, Jennifer Hensel, were among the Sandy Hook families who filed a lawsuit against Infowars host Alex Jones, who long claimed on his show that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax."
Whelp, there it is. The Texas Medical Center has deleted its helpful charts showing base and surge ICU capacity. No longer part of the daily updates. Comes 3 days after Gov. Abbott ordered hospitals in Houston to stop doing elective surgeries to preserve ICU beds.
NBC News reporters found a school stocking classrooms with kitty litter! But it’s not for kids who identify as cats��the absurd anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory being spread by GOP politicians.
It’s in case of a prolonged lockdown caused by a school shooting.
The national media “wanted to make it about race,” she said, referring to the murder of nine Black people by a white supremacist who said he committed the massacre hoping to ignite a race war.
Nikki Haley speaks regularly about her leadership of SC when the confederate flag was taken down. This was the only time tonight that she used the word "race" when talking about the Mother Emanuel Church massacre, which was carried about by an avowed white supremacist
Note to staff at a Houston safety net hospital:
-50% of new COVID tests coming back positive
-No more ICU beds
-No more remdesivir
-No more convalescent plasma
-12 COVID patients in need of ICU care — stuck in the ER
-Tomorrow will be worse...
@NBCNews
Board member Sheri Mills: "I would like to let the teachers know, if you are worried about teaching in this school district, that you should watch this vote. I want you to know that you are right to be worried by whoever votes yes."
BREAKING: By a vote of 5-4, with the mayor casting the tie-breaking vote, the city of Franklin, Tennessee, approved a permit for an LGBTQ pride festival.
The board delayed a vote on a “community decency” policy.
Backstory:
Dear major American news outlets: As Houston’s COVID crisis deepens in the coming days, you will no doubt be confronted with a familiar temptation. But you must not give in. Do not, under any circumstances, use the words, “Houston, we have a problem.”
God speed.
A federal judge ordered Llano, Texas, officials to put library books back on shelves, calling the bans unconstitutional.
Rather than comply, county leaders want to … just close the library.
Here’s a text from a member of the library advisory board celebrating those plans.
Text message today from a Robb Elementary teacher who hid silently on the floor with her children — crying and praying for more than 35 minutes — as gunfire and screams echoed from a classroom down the hall.
Weston Brown had given up challenging his mother’s anti-LGBTQ beliefs.
But that was before she started coming after library books.
My latest for
@NBCNews
,
@propublica
and
@TexasTribune
.
I came across some disturbing Texas history while researching my latest story.
In 1956, after a judge ordered Mansfield schools to integrate, a white mob—backed by local police and city officials—blocked three Black students from attending and hung each of them in effigy. 1/
I didn’t work it in because that’s not what today is about, but this teacher talked about how upsetting it is that educators have come under partisan attack this year. Accused of indoctrinating & grooming kids instead of protecting them.
Think about that as you read the ending.
“What do you want me to say?” the teacher told me after I knocked on her door. “That I can’t eat? That all I hear are their voices screaming? And I can’t help them?”
This interview was one of the hardest I've ever done.
I hope you'll give it a read.
The
@statesman
has obtained & published surveillance footage from the Uvalde shooting, which shows police waiting in the hall to rescue children.
Here's a screenshot from one hour in of someone in ballistic gear stopping get some hand sanitizer.
In a secret recording, an administrator in Southlake advised teachers that if they have a book in their class about the Holocaust, they should also have one from an "opposing" perspective.
Our latest on the war over books in schools:
@ahylton26
@NBCNews
On Friday, thousands of gun owners gathered to defend and celebrate the types of laws that made it possible for a teenager to purchase a pair of AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles days after his 18th birthday.
My dispatch from Houston:
This same Franklin aldermen is scolding pride festival organizers for refusing to offer a booth to this religious group, which believes that homosexual attraction is the result of Original Sin and teachers gay youth to embrace a lifetime of celibacy:
NEW from me: A look at Speaker Mike Johnson's ties to evangelical activist David Barton, who's spent decades fighting church-state separation & who says he's already in touch with Johnson's team to offer advice on who he should hire to his staff.
@NBCNews
“The facts are that there are not two sides of the Holocaust." Powerful moment from a Jewish former student at tonight's school board meeting in Southlake, Texas, about the antisemitic bullying he says he endured as a kid.
Here's our story for
@NBCNews
:
A coalition of news outlets, including
@NBCNews
, has written a letter to the mayor of Uvalde informing him of the city’s right to release public records during an open investigation: “as you know, the members of the Uvalde community are crying out to know what happened that day.”
In a recent documentary about his life that was financed by the same billionaire who’s treated him to numerous undisclosed luxury vacations, the Justice said:
“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.”